Nowhere Kids
by Neurotic Cat Goddess
Summary: Dawn Summers is the only survivor of Sunnydale. She tries to make a new life but is pursued by
1. Chapter 1

Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection

are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul.

Victor Hugo

Nowhere Kids

Pairing: Dawn Summers/Luke Campbell

"As of right now," a pretty newscaster with sleek hair and too much makeup was saying into the camera, "the cause of the sinkhole that destroyed the sleepy town of Sunnydale two days ago is unknown. There has been speculation that underground caverns may have played a part, but once again, the cause is unknown. Of the Sunnydale residents who were in the town at the time, there are no reported survivors…"

Dawn turned off the television. She had been hoping to hear that survivors had been discovered, that by some miracle Buffy and the others were safe. Louise—the lady Dawn had been staying with in Oxnard—had wanted to skip work to be with Dawn, but she had convinced her to go.

"I'll be fine," she'd said. It was a lie, of course, and both of them knew it, but Louise had nodded and left. So here she was, in the spare, impersonal guest room, for she still hadn't unpacked her stuff. It was still in the magically expanded bag Willow had had the decency to pack before they'd _knocked her unconscious and dragged her to another town._

It was completely insane. What did they think, that she couldn't fight? She'd been taking Tai Kwon Do for years—well, to be fair, she'd never beaten a real attacker with those skills, but how would she learn if they kept locking her away? She was older than a lot of Potentials, she was a fairly powerful—though inexperienced—witch, and she could speak three languages and read four more dead ones!

She could have helped. If she had been there, maybe… and all the anger drained out of her as she thought of her sister again, of Willow and Xander and even annoying Andrew, and Giles and Anya and Spike, her homicidal babysitter and all the others and dammit, this was so unfair. Why did she have to be the one left? She hugged her knees to her chest and, for the first time since hearing about Sunnydale, began to cry.

888

After another three days of waiting for a phone call that wasn't coming, of calling Angel in Los Angeles to see if he knew anything, of Louise tiptoeing around her like she was a landmine, Dawn realized that she couldn't just stay here. She couldn't impose on a woman she only knew as the owner of a nightclub Xander had worked at ages ago.

Louise had been very kind to her, but Dawn knew Xander had given her some money to pay for food and everything, money that was only meant to last a short while. She couldn't go to Angel, as she didn't really like him and it seemed like he had enough problems right now. Her Dad was completely out of the question.

He hadn't even shown up for her mother's funeral, and in the unlikely event that he agreed to take over as her guardian, she would refuse. She hadn't spoken to him in a long time, and she couldn't help but feel that he had stopped being her Dad a long time ago.

So she was on her own. It was a dizzying, awful thought, but it also brought her a sense of freedom that she hadn't felt in a long time. She could do what she wanted now. There was no one to tell her she was too young, or not good enough.

There was no one to protect her.

888

They had all given her something, left in a package marked "Open if things go badly." Dawn couldn't imagine that things could have gone worse, well, unless the world really had ended, in which case she would be in no position to do anything. Buffy had left her the sword that Dawn had just been learning to use, that cross necklace she always wore, a photo album and Mr. Gordo.

It was this that really drove it home. Buffy was gone, she was dead and she wasn't coming back this time. They were all dead. She clutched the pig to her chest, crying with despair and rage at the unfairness of it all.

This time though, she was able to get control of herself after just a few minutes, and she started sorting through the contents of the package again, wiping away a stray tear now and then.

Willow had left some spellbooks and a few basic magick ingredients. From Xander, there were a dozen exquisitely carved stakes. Andrew had left videotapes from his attempt to chronicle Buffy's life, and Anya had left—at this point Dawn couldn't help but laugh a little, sadly, an illustrated _Kama Sutra_ and cash.

"Holy shit," Dawn breathed. Make that _a lot _of cash, along with a note warning Dawn that Anya would be demanding the money back if she got out of Sunnydale, so "don't spend it unless we all die."

Faith had included her favorite knife, the one Buffy had almost killed her with. From Giles, though… there were driver's licenses, passports, even birth certificates that all had pictures of Dawn on them, though she looked a bit different in each one—shorter hair, different color hair, glasses, things like that. He'd included a pair of glasses that were spelled to see through glamours and some tips about building identities and evading capture.

She had no idea who she was supposed to be evading, or how Giles had got all this stuff. She knew he'd been a bit wild in his youth, but come on! This was like secret agent stuff. She supposed the government might try something, if they knew what she was. Or even if they didn't, she was still the Slayer's sister. Without Buffy to protect her, the Initiative take two could try to capture her and run experiments-- but that was just crazy. She was being paranoid. Surely the government wasn't stupid enough to try that again?

Who was she kidding. If anyone could do something so boneheaded, it was the government. Besides, she was only fifteen. Child Services would be all over her as soon as they found out she was here, and the last thing Dawn wanted was to end up in foster care, or worse, with her father. She'd have to pretend to be someone else, someone _older_, and most of the identities were over twenty-one.

Passing for an adult would be hard, of course, but with some practice, the right clothes, maybe a little magick, it was doable. She hoped.

So it was settled. She would leave, and leave tonight, while Louise was still at work. Dawn had heard her on the phone with CPS before, and she didn't want to wait around for them to show up. She would buy a bus ticket to some city far away, maybe drift for awhile to throw off anyone who was chasing her, and then start over.

She could get a part-time job, something that didn't require a lot of experience, maybe go to a community college. It wouldn't be easy. She would have to on guard all the time, careful not to let anything slip. But it would be a life, and a free one at that.

If she could pull it off.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter One: You Can Never Go Home Again

Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy of Heroes.

If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon.  
--George Aiken

ONE YEAR LATER

Her name was Mary Collins, she was twenty-two years old, from a little town in Pennsylvania, and she worked part-time at a little diner in Seattle to put herself through nursing school. She was friendly and smart, but she didn't have any close friends, and she never talked about her past. Everyone liked her, but no one really knew her. They didn't know what her plans were after she finished school the next year.

They didn't know that there was no such person as Mary Collins.

It had been ten months since Dawn had stopped her little odyssey across the country and settled in Seattle. It had been easy, almost too easy, to settle into the routine of being someone else. Mary Collins had been an act at first, but now it was who she was.

But then, Mary Collins had secrets too. She never went hunting for trouble, but she always wore her cross and carried a sharpened pencil in her pocket. Mary Collins wasn't the good Catholic girl her cross necklace and weekly Mass attendance suggested. Mary Collins practiced witchcraft after dark in her apartment, and she was pretty damn good at it. She didn't do big, elaborate rituals, just practiced simple, useful things like telekinesis, invisibility, walking through walls. She'd practiced so much that she didn't need to cast a circle or light a candle anymore, just say a couple words or make a hand gesture.

That was about the limit of the spells she could command at a moment's notice, though she had cast layers and layers of protection and warning spells around her apartment. Those had taken longer, though—she'd had to do rituals for each one. Still, better to be safe.

Yes, Mary Collins was a bit paranoid.

888

Mary woke at seven when her alarm went off. She pulled herself out of bed and made a pot of coffee, still in her flannel pajamas, and drank it at her kitchen counter. Once she was sufficiently awake, she showered, dried her hair, which was a color she'd heard called dishwater blond. She didn't mind. It wasn't a color that drew attention, which was the whole point. She put on makeup—too much, masking her beauty—her glasses, and her school clothes.

She grabbed an apple and her book-bag as she ran out the door of her little apartment. She'd taken too long in the shower and was afraid she'd miss the bus. The bus stop was two blocks away, and she ran there, a little awkwardly, nothing like the smooth stride of Dawn Summers.

When she got there, the bus was just about to pull away from the curb. She gestured wildly and the doors opened again. Mary raced up the steps, out of breath running that short distance.

"Late again, Mary," the bus driver chided, but his tone was affectionate.

"You know how it is, Edgar," she said. "I always forget something." She smiled at him as she swiped her bus pass and gave a little self-deprecating laugh.

She'd had dreams all night, strange nightmares of explosions and running and men with guns. She tried to put them out of her mind, tried to remember herself. My name is Mary Collins. My parents' names are John and Margaret. I moved to Seattle after I finished high school. It was something of a game she played when she felt the carefully constructed mask of her life here slipping. If she just thought it enough, said it enough, she would start to believe it. That was the plan, at least.

Today was a lecture class, at least. She was so tired that she didn't think she could so much as insert an IV. When she got to class, she picked a seat near the back and set her notebook open on the desk. She rested her chin on her hand and tried to keep her eyes open, but she couldn't stop thinking about her dreams.

It made sense that her past was troubling her now. It had happened a week ago, and she'd thought she'd gotten over it, but it was just getting worse. She'd just been standing outside work on a coffee break, and the truck had come out of nowhere, going way too fast for the little alley. Mary didn't know the man standing in the alley, had never spoken to him before, but she'd reached out without thinking, pushing him out of the way of the bus. Only she hadn't touched him. She'd been standing twenty feet away, and she'd saved a man's life, but she couldn't get this bad feeling out of her head, like she'd made a mistake using her magick outside the safety of her apartment.

But what good was magick if you couldn't use it to save people? That man, though, he hadn't looked grateful to be saved. He'd looked at her with accusing eyes as he stood up, brushing the dust off his suit. She was inside before he could say anything, but she knew what he would ask. What are you?

"Yeah, Dawn, what are you? Who are you?" She muttered, distracted, and that bad feeling was getting worse, like she was standing at the edge of something very, very, bad and there had been a man with cheese in her dream, and Andrew of all people, and he had said something—what was it?

"Miss Collins?" The teacher asked. "Is there something you'd like to share?" The whole class turned to look at her, and Mary felt her face color. It was times like these that she felt about as young as she actually was.

"No, there's nothing ma'am," she said quickly, looking down, then glancing around the room. There was a shadow against the window in the door.

"Perhaps you'd like to aid with the demonstration, then?" Ms. Davis asked.

She had no idea what they were demonstrating. Some of her terror must have shown, because Amy, her sort-of friend, leaned over to ask, "Everything alright, Mary?"

She swallowed. There was definitely someone outside the door. She stood quickly, knowing if she was just being paranoid she would have a lot of questions to answer tomorrow.

"I'm sorry ma'am," she said, flinging her bag over her shoulder, leaving her notebook there on the table, and rushing toward the emergency exit. "I'm really not feeling well, I think I'm gonna…" She put her hand over her mouth as if she was going to vomit and pushed through the door, ignoring the shouted cry of "You can't go that way!" and the sudden screeching of alarms.


End file.
